


Watch the World Cave In

by Lucha_Pseud



Category: All Elite Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Hooking up, M/M, Mixed Kayfabe, Quarantine, Relationship Negotiation, Trapped in a Hotel Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23201836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucha_Pseud/pseuds/Lucha_Pseud
Summary: Seth had a lot of regrets. Getting drunk and falling back into bed with Jon Moxley topped the list. He would love to be able to slink away from his shame and lick his wounds, but a global pandemic had other plans. They were stuck in a hotel room together.
Relationships: Dean Ambrose | Jon Moxley/Seth Rollins | Tyler Black
Comments: 9
Kudos: 44





	Watch the World Cave In

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a twitter prompt (which I have subsequently lost) about an idea for a romcom wherein two people hook up and then are quarantined together.

Regret lined every rung of the ladder for Seth as he crawled up into consciousness. Sunlight splashed across his face, hot enough to turn his stomach. Or maybe that was the beer last night--the excess of carbs and alcohol causing a total shock to his system. Already, he had two things to regret before even opening his eyes: drinking too much and not closing the curtains.

And that didn’t even touch the surface of the shitstorm he would wade into when he pried open his eyelids.

Seth breathed to let the nausea pass, willing himself to not have to pee. Maybe he could just go back to sleep. Maybe if he slept long enough, he would wake up in an empty room.

The bathroom door creaked open. Feet shuffled across the floor. Seth squeezed his eyes tighter, but there was no drowning it out, no lying to himself. The truth was here with a raspy cough, leaning over the nightstand on the other side of the bed and picking something up, something that dragged metallically over the surface--his phone. He cursed, and his feet shuffled away toward the balcony.

“Hey, yeah," the familiar, deep voice said, presumably answering the phone. "I was asleep. What’s up?”

Seth took two fortifying breaths and made the big push to open his eyes.

It still shook Seth to lay eyes on Dean. No, not Dean--Jon. _Mox_. He changed his name when he left, like a divorce. He took on the mantle of his indy days, back before they ever met.

Jon had put on pants when he got up, but he remained shirtless. Facing away from the bed, Seth could see tension creeping up his back into his lats, straightening his shoulders. He scratched at his hairline in sharp, angry strokes. “What do you mean, quarantine?”

Seth’s stomach did another flip, this time accompanied by the cold rush of dread through his limbs, out to his hands and feet.

“No! Don’t come over here with that BTE bullshit. I’m bare-ass naked. Just text me when you figure it out. I’ll--”

Jon turned and looked at the bed out of the corner of his eye like he somehow hoped Seth wouldn’t be there. 

“I’ll just hang out here,” Jon finished, resigned.

Jon hung up and lowered the phone. He spent a few seconds contemplating the carpet, still as a statue, before he reanimated and turned around to address Seth.

“Well, I got good news and bad news,” Jon said. “What do you want first?”

“We’re quarantined in the hotel, and they won’t let us leave,” Seth said, groaning as he pushed himself up. “Yeah, I heard.”

“Fine, spoilsport. You want the bad news now?”

“_That_ was the good news?”

“Of course, babe. More time together. Do a little more drinking, a little more fucking--”

“There's no way I'm drinking with you again. Or fucking you. Last night was a fluke.”

Jon dropped his head with the ghost of a smile pulling on his mouth. He nodded--a tiny movement, a seemingly internal acknowledgment that things just weren’t going to be easy. Things never were between them. Guilt put holes in Seth’s irritation until it fizzled out.

“Fine, what’s the bad news?”

Jon’s blue eyes peeked cautiously up from the floor. “Vending machine is out of Cheetos,” he said, mischief crackling up his cheeks like flames.

Seth threw a pillow at Jon and struggled out of bed. “Cheetos,” he muttered, shaking his head while he stomped to the bathroom.

“Don’t suppose you could miracle me some more, messiah,” Jon called to his retreating back.

Seth rolled his eyes and shut the bathroom door.

*****

The real bummer was Seth couldn’t blame everything on the booze. That came later, nearly a full day after the first text from a geographically-challenged former tag team partner.

_how far from Davenport to Denver?_

It was out of the blue. Seth thought the last time they talked, the last fight they had, would surely be their last contact. At least for a while. Maybe they would see each other at conventions and exchange tight smiles, but their days of buddying up--of more than buddying up--seemed over.

Until Jon Moxley texted him.

Seth wasn’t even _in_ Davenport, not that it was anywhere near Denver. He had flown from New York directly to Chicago after Raw to do some business at his wrestling school. He sat in his office and stared at the text so long the screen got blurry in front of his dry eyes. Then he put his phone down and sneered. He would ignore it. He _could_ ignore it.

That stubborn thought lasted about half an hour before Seth caved and replied.

_Why?_

Jon texted back a picture of a VIP pass to AEW Dynamite. Jon stood front and center of the logo, head to head with Chris Jericho as the star of the promotion.

Seth threw his phone down again in disgust. This time, he headed out the door to get away from the temptation. The physical distance from his phone did nothing to quell the fire in his belly, the anger. By the time he got through meddling with lessons, working out on his own, and showering, Seth returned to his office, ready to give Jon a piece of his mind.

Only, he picked up his phone, and another message popped up.

_okay no pressure_

The hasty message, clearly sent when Jon second-guessed the offer, put a damper on Seth’s anger. He tried to read through the lines, determine why Jon would want him there. Maybe he wanted to make amends after the way they parted. The wrestling community was a small world, and Jon had lived in it long enough to know it was a bad idea to burn bridges. Maybe they could be--not _friends_, but not furious with each other.

Maybe Jon was right. Maybe it was time to let shit go, get some closure. And. Well. Maybe Seth _was_ a little curious about the hot new wrestling show he refused to watch out of irrational stubbornness.

Seth spent half an hour leaning against his desk and arguing with himself before he finally worked up the nerve to answer. He let his eyes read over Jon’s messages again and sighed. “Okay,” he said to himself while his shaky fingers typed out a message. “You can do this.”

*****

“How long do you think this will last?” Seth asked. Six hours after waking up, he had managed to drink enough water to feel mostly human again. They were perched on the bed, a respectable distance apart, watching TV.

“I don’t know. Episodes are like, what, twenty minutes. Add commercials--”

“Not the show, doofus. The quarantine.”

“Oh,” Jon said. He sounded disappointed. “How long was that ship laid up off the coast before they got everybody tested?”

“Like three days.”

“I’d say about that, then.”

“Three _days_?” Seth repeated.

“I don’t know what you’re worried about. It’s only Thursday. If the quarantine lasts three days, you got plenty of time to get to Philly.”

Plenty of time might have been an exaggeration, but Jon was right. Seth would make it in time for Elimination Chamber. If it was only three days. 

“What if it goes longer than three days?” Seth asked--the question he didn't really want the answer to.

Jon paused chewing his gum and cut a look at Seth. “Well...maybe you’ll get fired. Come play in the dirt with me.” He said it with an impish smile, like he actually thought the idea was funny.

“Shut up,” Seth said, a lame retort. He didn’t know why he let Dean--_Jon_\--cut him so deep, but he always did. Seth wrenched himself out of bed to storm away, like he had anywhere to storm to. The hotel asked guests to remain in their rooms to await testing. Lacking options, Seth found the balcony door and opened it.

“Aww, don’t be like that,” Jon called after him. “I was just kidding. Vince isn’t going to fire his golden bo--”

Seth closed the door on him.

It might have been unseasonably warm in Denver for early March, but that didn’t mean it was balmy. Seth shivered in his tee-shirt and jeans, barefoot on the cold concrete. Thankfully, the overhang prevented snow from accumulating, but it could undoubtedly be more hospitable.

Still, as long as he could stand it, the cold would keep Seth away from De--Jon.

Again, Seth regretted getting drunk. Things were going so well before they went out--a little stilted, but friendly. He reconnected with familiar faces backstage before the show and watched Dynamite from a private box, and everything was _fine_.

And then afterward, Jon grinned at him and offered to take him to dinner, and Seth lost his tight grip on the situation. As the night rolled on, he let himself lean into Jon’s affection, let old habits wrap around him like clothing. The drinks flowed, and Dean smiled.

But it was Seth who kissed him, Seth who insisted they come back to the hotel. He wasn’t so drunk he could pretend Jon pushed him into bed.

Maybe they couldn’t be friends after all. Maybe this was all there was for them, irrevocable.

Seth leaned his forearms on the balcony rail and looked out over the city. It looked like something out of a snow globe, all sparkly and clean. Snow hid a lot of faults, coated them in shiny white, and dusted them with glamor. A home-grown Iowa boy, Seth knew the kind of grime snow could hide, the filth. It was like wrestling, that way. It didn’t matter what kind of person you were, who you fucked over. If you could pull a phoenix splash off the top rope or cut a promo, they loved you for it.

The door slid open and interrupted Seth’s revere. Jon stepped out with him, then lit a cigarette with one hand and handed out a hoodie with the other.

“I thought you quit,” Seth said. His frozen fingers resisted the motion of taking the hoodie.

Jon shrugged. “Guess you never really quit some stuff.” He grimaced as he took a long inhale and crinkled his eyes at Seth, a conspiratorial smile like they were sharing something. It got Seth’s hackles up, the idea that Jon could still act like they were a team.

“You quit me,” Seth said, not because he wanted to. It escaped him, words climbing out of the steel cage of his mind and fleeing over the top. They landed on the outside of the ring, and Jon stopped moving.

“I didn’t quit _you_, Jesus. Why you gotta take everything so damn personal?”

“That’s what it felt like. Personal. You made that--that stupid video. You were escaping from prison. _Prison_, Dean? Really?”

Jon rolled his shoulders at the name. Seth had a flash of worry that he might have gone too far before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to care. He had sworn not to care.

“It wasn’t about you,” Jon said through gritted teeth.

“You were in a program with _me_. You were my partner. How could it not be about me?”

Jon sighed smoke out through his nose like a frustrated dragon and scratched at his eyebrow. “How long?”

“What?”

“How long would we be in a program together? How long before they put me back on Smackdown, you on Raw? Or you in the title spot and me down with the mid-carders?”

“So that’s what it was about? Titles?”

“No,” Jon said, but he looked conflicted. “Yes. I don’t know. It was about a lot of stuff.”

Seth watched Jon drag on his smoke. “You could have told me.”

Jon’s eyes looked piercing blue in the brightness from the sun and snow. He set those eyes on Seth, almost too sharp to look at. “You think I didn’t try? I came to you before my elbow was even healed, when I was all fucked up, and I tried, man. But all you wanted to talk about was me coming back, teaming up."

Seth remembered. He was so excited he kept pitching ideas to creative until they got so tired of him they caved in and agreed to one. Then he took the idea to Jon--Dean, at the time--like an overzealous puppy. In the hazy distance of his memory, he could see Jon looking reluctant.

"I don't know," Jon said. "Maybe I let myself get too caught up thinking about, like. Impossible stuff.”

“Like what?”

Jon’s eyes cut across Seth’s face once more before they dropped to the floor. “Come on. It’s freezing out here.”

Seth followed him inside, feeling like they got nothing out of the exchange on the balcony but cold. He watched Jon strip out of his jacket and toe out of his boots.

“What impossible stuff?” Seth asked.

Jon grimaced. “Not like it matters now, huh?”

Seth opened his mouth to let his frustration bubble over before--

Jon interrupted him before he could talk. “I was thinking, you know. You and me. We’re a hell of a tag team.”

“Yeah. We were.”

“Maybe, if we were good enough. If we put on a good enough show, I thought we might just swing it where they left us together. Maybe we spend our last good years hanging onto those belts as tight as we can, you and me against the world.”

Seth’s mind cast back to the fight, the beginning of the end of Dean Ambrose. Before the match, before the crowds, Seth remembered the sharp words of his partner going off on creative because they were planning a heel turn, an angle to split up their tag team.

“I didn’t want to fight you anymore. We did that. I know how that ends. We fight for, what? The buildup to a couple pay-per-views, a few lousy months. Then they split us up, and we go back to whatever. Helping call-ups from NXT get through baby’s first promo--I didn’t want that. I wanted to fight _with_ you, stay with you.”

Seth’s throat hurt from all the unsaid things piling up in there. “You left because they split us up?”

“Not just that, you know. There was other stuff. But--if they kept us together, I maybe would have stayed. Maybe I could have dealt with it.” Jon shrugged.

Seth’s mind tangled in knots, trying to wrap around what Jon was saying. “You would have stayed for me?”

Jon shrugged again, eyes firmly on anywhere but Seth’s face. When he nodded, it could have been a twitch, barely there at all.

“Jon...” The name sounded strange in Seth’s ears, felt weird on his tongue, but it made Jon’s eyes drag back up from the floor with something close to hope. Anything else Seth wanted to say got lost on the way from his brain to his mouth. Instead of talking, he took a couple of halting steps forward and shakily pressed his mouth to Jon’s.

“Been in the whiskey?” Jon asked when he pulled back. His grin said he didn’t think Seth would kiss him sober. Seth shook his head and smashed their lips together harder, like he might be able to press all the things he could never say into Jon’s mouth, infuse him with the knowledge that Seth didn’t hate him.

“Jon, let’s--” Seth forced himself back and jerked a nod toward the bed. When he tried to move that way, a hand around his wrist stopped him.

“You can still call me Dean. You know. If it helps.”

“_Jon_,” Seth said pointedly. “Come to bed.”

Jon’s grip on his wrist relaxed, and his pinched expression resolved into a near-bashful smile. When Seth moved, Jon followed.

*****

Seth spent the three days of quarantine getting thoroughly used to saying Jon’s name. The hotel brought them room service, but there really wasn’t much to do but eat, sleep, and screw. Thankfully, they didn’t run into any of their neighbors leaving the adjacent rooms. Seth heard them banging on the walls a few times when he and Jon got loud in bed, and he would have combusted with embarrassment.

They took the stairs down to avoid congestion at the elevators. Jon expertly navigated the stairwells and halls to get them out a back door instead of into the lobby. They ended up in the parking lot far away from any other All-Elite crew.

“See? No paps--safe and sound,” Jon said with a big, cocky grin.

“Yes, I’m eternally grateful. Now can we just--” Seth started toward Jon’s rental car with his hat pulled low. Out in the open, anybody could see them, and he had no interest in explaining his presence there to his bosses when he got to New York.

They were on the highway following road signs to the airport when it occurred to Seth to ask, “So, what do we do now?”

Jon shrugged. “You fly off, do your Elimination Chamber thing. I head home for a few days--”

“Yeah, but--you know what I mean. What are _we_ going to do?”

“Oh, well. That depends.”

Seth’s heart thumped into a staccato beat with uncertainty. He suddenly felt very foolish about spending three days in a hotel room and not asking about the future. Maybe Jon would be content with making up, not taking things any further. Maybe--

“How far is Vegas from Davenport?”

Jon’s contemplative frown cracked into a goofball grin, and Seth let out his breath in a whoosh. He smacked Jon in the shoulder for knowingly being a dickhead.

“I’m not even going to be in Davenport.”

“I know, I know. But--come see me after Raw. We’ll drive to Salt Lake City together.”

“Why would I want to go to Salt Lake City?”

Jon shrugged and cut a side-eyed glance at him full of cautious hope. “That’s where I’ll be.”

Seth rolled his eyes and huffed and crossed his arms because he wasn’t going to give in that easy. "I'll think about it," he said, but they both knew by the time they pulled into the airport rental return he would cave.


End file.
